November 24, 2003 – Richy's Random Ramblings

My system has just tagged that Driveway.com (aka IBackup.com) and Sandbox.com have sold on their mailing lists with one of my email addresses to a spammer. I receive almost identical emails to two tagged addresses: one I used on driveway.com, the other sandbox.com: contents follow….

Both were sent from were “injected” directly into my incoming SMTP server (instead of being sent via their ISP), both claimed to have been sent via Eudora, and both had incorrect/faked Message-Ids (that message ID’s were actually created by my mail server). Oh – and they were both in HTML format and had “web bugs” in them (images loaded from a remote server which would enable the spammer to see who opened the email and therefore whose email address was valid).

Needless to say, both spams got reported via Spamcop.net to their upstream providers.

I had today off work as a kinda holiday (due to the server migrations we’ve been doing, I’ve been putting in some serious overtime the last fortnight: around 3 hours every night) and managed to make an appointment next Wednesday (the 3^rd of December) to see my Doctor concerning a few health issues I’ve been slightly worried about. I hope it’s just a case of Psychosomatic Hypochondria which can be treated with a cause of Placebos ( 😉 ), but you never know. I suspect I’ve got high blood pressure as every weekend that I’m at my parents (which is every fortnight), I’ve been taking my BP and it’s been extremely high… Plus I’ve been having pains in my chest quite a bit recently and (especially for the last 2.5hours today), been feeling really “light headed” and like I’m about to faint (I haven’t yet though…).

Anyway, I was just downstairs reading a magazine whilst Zaphod (my “spare” computer) installs Linux and I thought I’d weigh myself (the “really interesting” article about “Posh Spice” – Victoria Beckham made me think of weight) so I got on my digital scales. 14stones. Aaargh – must be a mis-reading. Got off, got back on 11stone 2lbs. Ahh – that’s better, but that could be a mis-reading as well (as digital scales can be “funky” sometimes). Next three weighings all give 14stones exactly.

How the h-ll did that happen though? Last time I weight myself, I was 13stone 10lbs and loosing weight (around 2 months ago) so how on earth have I practically gained a stone in weight recently? That weight gain, combined with my height of 6ft 2in (yeah, I’m British but I still use good old Imperial measurements) puts me officially in the “Overweight” category (my Body Mass Index is 22.5). This is shocking! Especially for me as most of my life I’ve been in the “underweight” category…

*gulp*. I know I’ve been drinking a lot of Cola recently, eating sweets and having sugary foods such as pancakes, but still… And I’ve only been eating/drinking those cause I’ve felt thirsty and just really really felt like eating something like that (it makes me feel better – see previous entry).

I just hope the Doc’s got some good news, but the way things are looking I’ve probably got the onset of diabetes or something similar. Gak.

Day: 24 November 2003

Spam: Customer Data, Let’s Sell It!

Personal: How the h-ll did that happen?